Medical professionals are the health workers such as nurses, doctors, dentists, psychologists, dental assistants and all the people involved in taking care of a patient. As such complaints can be lodged against any of the medical professionals and not only the doctors.

Nurses for instance, often make mistakes. They work long hours and have many patients. When they are tired mistakes come easily. In such cases a complaint against the specific nurse as well as the hospital can be lodged should you sustain personal injury because the nurse provided the wrong medication or was negligent.

All the medical professionals are bound by the oath of confidentiality and should thus keep your medical information confidential unless provided to for instance, the doctor to ensure that a proper diagnosis can be made. There are circumstances when it will be acceptable for the doctors to disclose patient information including saving the life of another person and when given written permission by the patient to do so.

The doctors should take all the required steps to get to the correct diagnosis as wrong diagnosis can lead to severe consequences including permanent injury to the patient and even death. Many complaints and claims come from the wrong diagnosis because the doctor ignored information provided by the patient, didn’t take the condition as serious enough to perform more tests or simply didn’t take the time to do a proper examination of the patient. This can easily happen in a public healthcare facility where the workload is heavy and where it is difficult to get to know patients because of time constraints.

Irrespective of the situation medical professionals should take all the required steps to provide proper patient care without discriminating against the patient in any form. If you have been ill treated, wrongly diagnosed with an illness or had a situation of confidentiality breaching, contact us for advice and assistance regarding the necessary steps to lodge a complaint or to take legal action.

For more information on this subject, please give us a call at 012 460 3668 (SA)
or e-mail us at linda@avdw.co.za